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Wizardry VII? It features roaming adventuring parties that can fight each other and take quest items before you do. Quest items can change hands, even being sold to merchants and the like. None of it is really scripted. If you go looking for a quest item at a certain location and it isn't there, you'll have to hunt down the group that got there first. They could even have been killed by a further party and you'll have to hunt them down instead. It's all pretty awesome and dynamic. I can't think of any RPG that has done it since.

The cool thing about the game is that it features multiple factions and diplomacy. You can turn a hostile group into a peaceful one or vice versa. You can even exchange what your party has learnt about the game world with what opposition groups have learnt about the game world. If developers didn't turn the RPG genre into shitty dating sims or action games then we'd have had pretty awesome RPGs in 2011. As it turns out, what we have today is far more primitive than an old game made in 1992.

That sounds a bit like Stalkers A-Life (especially with the AKM mod), except that it does not take quest items... Unfortunately, that's an action game.

Suddenly this strikes me for odd. Bethesda shouts that it has this fantastic AI system, but it is outshined by FPS games and 1992 games alike 0_o.

A few mods tapped into the potential by making hungry people steal food etc and guards Chase them. It's got nothing to do with radiant AI, but I loved running about with all of the goblin shaman staffs and being in the imperial city looking for someone and a guard startled me shouting and ran by me to fight goblins. Who turned on each other(must have been 2 goblin groups) after killing the guards, I went invisible and kited the staff following goblins into the mages guild who ended up hurting a guard... Free for all!

Now that I've played DEHR, which inspired this thread, I do gotta wonder: why bother going through everything to get all the XP? I've just been playing straight through, trying to make the best of it, and I've never been hurting for Praxis points, the game throws 'em at you. I have more than I know what to do with. Playing to deliberately farm XP must be pretty ludicrous.

Tying rewards to in-game mechanics is good but limiting and cyclical (limiting: once I have the augs/weapons I want, getting more Praxis points/money is meaningless, and cyclical: as I get better, It becomes easier for me to get experience/money). More games should have some extra dimension or something to tie rewards to. Like, in DEHR, there could be some internet, accessible through your home and computers, where you could buy extra information about characters, places, missions, world history and events, etc. It would fit the theme and allow my cash to go toward something more interesting than more bullets.

EDIT: To be clear, there's an obvious cycle with gameplay/rewards -> Play the game, get rewards, rewards allow you to play the game better, which nets you more rewards, etc. I want rewards that don't feed back into that cycle, but are ends in themselves.

Like, in DEHR, there could be some internet, accessible through your home and computers, where you could buy extra information about characters, places, missions, world history and events, etc. It would fit the theme and allow my cash to go toward something more interesting than more bullets.